We released Merb 1.0 RC3 today, inching a bit closer to a 1.0 final, which we intend to release at RubyConf. RC3 is mostly bugfixes, but there are some items of note:

Since we intend to support webrat as a primary mode of testing in 1.0 final, we've restructured the testing helpers to make that possible. No testing API changes at this time.

In 1.0 final, get/post/put/delete will be aliases for request(). At this time, they're still aliased to the old pre-1.0 request()-helper. To help ease the transition, we will probably provide a use_legacy_request_helper! method.

There was a bug in request testing that preventing sessions from persisting for more than 2 requests. We have implemented a cookie jar, so sessions now persist properly (basically, we emulate a real browser).

As a result, you can now pass a :jar parameter to request(), which will allow you to test multiple sessions in the same test. If you specify no :jar parameter, all request() operations will use a :default jar. The syntax is request("/foo", :jar => :my_jar). request("/foo") is the same as request("/foo", :jar => :default).

merb-action-args works with ParseTree 2.x and 3.x.

merb-auth had a few bugs around redirecting back and retrying failed logins that were resolved.

The final, good API for dependency is solidified. A few things that you can do now: dependency "parse_tree", :require_as => "ParseTree" { # do stuff after the gem is loaded }. You can also pass :immediate => true to have the gem load immediately, instead of being deferred until the framework is set up (the default).

We should now fully support Windows.

Seamless JRuby support is coming via Glassfish. RC3 has some fixes to make it simpler for Glassfish to hook in.